Spectator - Christmas Crossword -...
Crosswords6 mins ago
Hoyle's Junkyard, Kepler's Wife, & Monkeys
Mention Fred Hoyle's 'Chances of a tornado in a junkyard producing a 747' analogy, to the creation of the universe, the knee-jerk reaction (at least on AB in R&S) is to quote 'Hoyle's Fallacy', which is based largely on semantics. As an artist (with an interest in science) I stick with Fred, and recently it appears more scientists begin to concur.
In the book 'Leviathan and the Air-Pump' (Princeton University Press) I discover this quotation from [one of my heroes] Johannes Kepler in his 'Stella nova' (1606) about his redoubtable wife;
'Yesterday, when I had grown tired of writing and my mind was full of dust motes from thinking about atoms, she called me to dinner and served me a salad. Whereupon I said to her, if one were to throw into the air the pewter plates, lettuce leaves, grains of salt, drops of oil, vinegar and water and the glorious eggs, and all these things were to remain there for eternity, then would one day this salad just fall together by chance? My beauty replied "But not in this presentation, nor in this order". '
Does the Hoyle/Mrs Kepler argument put paid to the 'Infinite monkey theorem' ?
In the book 'Leviathan and the Air-Pump' (Princeton University Press) I discover this quotation from [one of my heroes] Johannes Kepler in his 'Stella nova' (1606) about his redoubtable wife;
'Yesterday, when I had grown tired of writing and my mind was full of dust motes from thinking about atoms, she called me to dinner and served me a salad. Whereupon I said to her, if one were to throw into the air the pewter plates, lettuce leaves, grains of salt, drops of oil, vinegar and water and the glorious eggs, and all these things were to remain there for eternity, then would one day this salad just fall together by chance? My beauty replied "But not in this presentation, nor in this order". '
Does the Hoyle/Mrs Kepler argument put paid to the 'Infinite monkey theorem' ?
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@ Khandro - Once again. We were talking about this comment of yours;
"Hoyle is a more reliable scientific source than Richard Dawkins, of whom it is frequently said, isn't a real scientist anyway"
I asked you who it was who said that Dawkins was not a real scientist. I asked you how frequently it had been said.
Read the question again. I asked you for commentators who had said Dawkins was not a real scientist.
You offer us Phillip Johnson - Harvard LAW Professor, the creator of the absurd pseudo-science that is Intelligent Design and principal architect of The Wedge Theory. Who has not actually commented on Dawkins scientific ability or lack of it, but on his atheism and his criticism of Creationism.Who,even had he actually commented on Dawkins scientific ability, would not be judged suitably scientifically qualified to make an authoratitive assessment.
Whose opinion is anyway hopelessly compromised by his own self-evident bias.
So - your offered commentator, your expert witness on Dawkins scientific ability is rejected. Has not commentated on the topic in question, would not be a competent authority to make that assessment, and biased and therefore unreliable anyway.
Your original assertion still unsubstantiated.
So,who else do you offer, out of this list of authoritative qualified commentors who have remarked that Dawkins is a poor scientist?
You offer Alistair McGrath- Promising, since McGrath could be considered qualified to comment.You offer a quotation - but that quotation says nothing about his opinion of Dawkins worth as a scientist. It just criticises his stance on religion.
And thats not entirely surprising is it, since McGrath is a Professor of Theology, a christian apologist, and another commentator who dislikes "militant atheism".Someone who wrote a book that purports to be a rebuttal of "The God Delusion" ,entitled "The Dawkins Delusion" ( funny eh? Laugh? I nearly started). But nowhere does McGrath offer an assessment of Dawkins scientific abilities - which was the point of my question to you. Merely a long-winded apologist rejection of Dawkins atheism.
So - second witness rejected.This time probably scientifically qualified, but who has not actually commented on Dawkins' scientific ability - the point of your initial ,and, as we see -evidence-free assertion.
And whilst we are on the subject of evidence -free ad hominem assertions - What evidence do you have to support your contention that Dawkins is a "mickey mouse" Professor and McGrath a real professor? Who actually says that? Or is that just your bias and your own personal animus showing through again?
You have still offered no evidence to support your assertions, Khandro. You can offer no proper defence of Hoyles absurd proposition - only that scientists are "poe-faced," "unable to understand the poetry of Hoyles assertion", and anyway it should be interpreted "metaphorically."
R-i-i-i-g-h-t.
You have so far offered no support or evidence for your statement that "it is frequently said that Dawkins is not a real scientist".
I suspect the only people who think that are the looneytunes that reject evolution in favour of creationism, and/or those faithheads. offended by his "militant atheism" - People like you really, Khandro. Endearingly pathetic, I suppose.
Anyone else? Anyone qualified and at least superficially unbiased? Anyone to support your offensively dismissive comment about being a mickey mouse Professor?
"Hoyle is a more reliable scientific source than Richard Dawkins, of whom it is frequently said, isn't a real scientist anyway"
I asked you who it was who said that Dawkins was not a real scientist. I asked you how frequently it had been said.
Read the question again. I asked you for commentators who had said Dawkins was not a real scientist.
You offer us Phillip Johnson - Harvard LAW Professor, the creator of the absurd pseudo-science that is Intelligent Design and principal architect of The Wedge Theory. Who has not actually commented on Dawkins scientific ability or lack of it, but on his atheism and his criticism of Creationism.Who,even had he actually commented on Dawkins scientific ability, would not be judged suitably scientifically qualified to make an authoratitive assessment.
Whose opinion is anyway hopelessly compromised by his own self-evident bias.
So - your offered commentator, your expert witness on Dawkins scientific ability is rejected. Has not commentated on the topic in question, would not be a competent authority to make that assessment, and biased and therefore unreliable anyway.
Your original assertion still unsubstantiated.
So,who else do you offer, out of this list of authoritative qualified commentors who have remarked that Dawkins is a poor scientist?
You offer Alistair McGrath- Promising, since McGrath could be considered qualified to comment.You offer a quotation - but that quotation says nothing about his opinion of Dawkins worth as a scientist. It just criticises his stance on religion.
And thats not entirely surprising is it, since McGrath is a Professor of Theology, a christian apologist, and another commentator who dislikes "militant atheism".Someone who wrote a book that purports to be a rebuttal of "The God Delusion" ,entitled "The Dawkins Delusion" ( funny eh? Laugh? I nearly started). But nowhere does McGrath offer an assessment of Dawkins scientific abilities - which was the point of my question to you. Merely a long-winded apologist rejection of Dawkins atheism.
So - second witness rejected.This time probably scientifically qualified, but who has not actually commented on Dawkins' scientific ability - the point of your initial ,and, as we see -evidence-free assertion.
And whilst we are on the subject of evidence -free ad hominem assertions - What evidence do you have to support your contention that Dawkins is a "mickey mouse" Professor and McGrath a real professor? Who actually says that? Or is that just your bias and your own personal animus showing through again?
You have still offered no evidence to support your assertions, Khandro. You can offer no proper defence of Hoyles absurd proposition - only that scientists are "poe-faced," "unable to understand the poetry of Hoyles assertion", and anyway it should be interpreted "metaphorically."
R-i-i-i-g-h-t.
You have so far offered no support or evidence for your statement that "it is frequently said that Dawkins is not a real scientist".
I suspect the only people who think that are the looneytunes that reject evolution in favour of creationism, and/or those faithheads. offended by his "militant atheism" - People like you really, Khandro. Endearingly pathetic, I suppose.
Anyone else? Anyone qualified and at least superficially unbiased? Anyone to support your offensively dismissive comment about being a mickey mouse Professor?
Oxford University had never had, nor never felt the need to have, a Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, the position was endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field, and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.
Nice work if you can get it.
Nice work if you can get it.
So, just your opinion then. Evidence free like your assertion about qualified commentators suggest Dawkins is not a real scientist?
Your opinion, formed from a bias against "militant atheists" and a personal malice toward Dawkins, it would seem.
Jim too dislikes Dawkins rhetoric. But he does not allow that dislike to colour his opinion of the science and the evidence, unlike you. OK.
So, whats the tally so far? Hoyles statement about 747s junkyards, like Keplers wife about salad, shown to be a fallacy.
Your allegations about Dawkins' scientific ability shown up for what it is - your personal opinion, motivated by malice, as are your allegations about being a "proper Professor".
Whats next on the list of topics for rebuttal?
Your opinion, formed from a bias against "militant atheists" and a personal malice toward Dawkins, it would seem.
Jim too dislikes Dawkins rhetoric. But he does not allow that dislike to colour his opinion of the science and the evidence, unlike you. OK.
So, whats the tally so far? Hoyles statement about 747s junkyards, like Keplers wife about salad, shown to be a fallacy.
Your allegations about Dawkins' scientific ability shown up for what it is - your personal opinion, motivated by malice, as are your allegations about being a "proper Professor".
Whats next on the list of topics for rebuttal?
If Oxford felt they didn't need a Professor for Public Understanding of Science then they were mistaken. Not sure Dawkins is my #1 choice for the post but the fact is, as clearly has been shown many times on this website and others that a large proportion of the general public do not understand Science at all. Some of these people who don't get the subject even go on to become politicians influencing public policy. That's not really an ideal situation to say the least.
I've responded to your original post about Hoyle's argument earlier, explaining why I think it was flawed. It might be worth your responding to my points and other's about that post, rather than about Rickard Dawkins - who for all his flaws is just one scientist of many who knows and understands Evolution far better than I do.
I've responded to your original post about Hoyle's argument earlier, explaining why I think it was flawed. It might be worth your responding to my points and other's about that post, rather than about Rickard Dawkins - who for all his flaws is just one scientist of many who knows and understands Evolution far better than I do.
Jim we're both talking about the same world. I was maybe a tad bristly with you last night. The quantum world does not so much deal with certainties as with probabilities. Though in various situations it's useful to remember that the sum of all probabilities must equal 1. Eg Schrodinger's cat.
For the purpose of this discussion, turn the black box upside down. What is the probability of the building blocks of life NOT coming together in the way they did ?
Dawkins is good at what he knows, I thought that 'The Selfish Gene' was well explained - this is Dawkins' appeal to the layman - though in many cases he was regurgitating the ideas of people like R.A. Fisher and W.D. Hamilton.
For the purpose of this discussion, turn the black box upside down. What is the probability of the building blocks of life NOT coming together in the way they did ?
Dawkins is good at what he knows, I thought that 'The Selfish Gene' was well explained - this is Dawkins' appeal to the layman - though in many cases he was regurgitating the ideas of people like R.A. Fisher and W.D. Hamilton.
I flatter myself if I say that I know a lot about quantum mechanics - how else do you think I came up with that weird number earlier estimating the probability that a man passes through a wall? Treated the wall as a metre-wide square potential well with depth estimated by using Coulomb's law at a distance of 50 centimetres from the centre of the wall.
All technicalities aside, I do agree with your general points Lanky, and made some of them myself earlier. I think people need to be very careful though with probabilities and not sure that all of us have been so far in this thread.
All technicalities aside, I do agree with your general points Lanky, and made some of them myself earlier. I think people need to be very careful though with probabilities and not sure that all of us have been so far in this thread.
Returning to the subject; Kepler and Hoyle's analogies can not be viewed in the same light, Kepler was having difficulty trying to refute the arguments of the Epicureans, who thought the universe was the product of chance and I think his view of the universe was that of a total homogeneous entity, you have to remember that at that time (1606) astronomy and astrology were completely interconnected, even by him.
Hoyle was not addressing the evolution of life on earth as much as the circumstances which would be necessary for it to take place.
Hoyle was not addressing the evolution of life on earth as much as the circumstances which would be necessary for it to take place.
Obviously it doesn't apply to all of Kepler's work (although the way he arrived at his results is surprisingly dodgy) but anyone who actively believes in Astrology means that you have to take what they say with more than a pinch of salt.
A lecture I went to earlier suggested that Kepler's original work was motivated not be the Scientific method but by questions of morality, along the lines of "the universe isn't perfect so why do the planets have to move in circles?" Sometimes people can reach the right answer for the wrong reasons, but more often than not the wrong reasons lead to the wrong answer. Perhaps, if Kepler was struggling to refute the "product of chance" origin theory of the Universe, that's because it's the right theory!
A lecture I went to earlier suggested that Kepler's original work was motivated not be the Scientific method but by questions of morality, along the lines of "the universe isn't perfect so why do the planets have to move in circles?" Sometimes people can reach the right answer for the wrong reasons, but more often than not the wrong reasons lead to the wrong answer. Perhaps, if Kepler was struggling to refute the "product of chance" origin theory of the Universe, that's because it's the right theory!
The probability of things being what they are, given that they are what they are, is invariably and precisely 1 in 1 . . . no less probable than the creation of a creator in an attempt to offer as an explanation that which is exempt from explanation not merely by virtue of improbability but impossibility. Creativity is a product of, not the author of, existence . . . and of a billions years process of evolution to boot.
jim: Earlier you showed by your undoubted command of mathematics that the odds against walking through a brick wall were so incomprehensibly vast that the supposition is meaningless (am I right?), and yet you take the 'Epicurean' view that the universe is a product of chance! Surely the odds against the existence our planet, and its ability to bear carbon-based conscious life are even greater.
It doesn't matter how great they are, it occurred.
Beside no one knows how many opportunities there were to create a universe where that occurred.
(Came across this thread late and it seems so involved from the start. May read it later. but I've never understood why folk think the tordano nonsense is a valid comparison. No tornado comes back and improves on it's last result time and again.)
Beside no one knows how many opportunities there were to create a universe where that occurred.
(Came across this thread late and it seems so involved from the start. May read it later. but I've never understood why folk think the tordano nonsense is a valid comparison. No tornado comes back and improves on it's last result time and again.)
Monkeys producing a strings of 's' and not much else
shows they werent typing at random doesnt it ?
Problem is boys you can see evolution under the microscope
(LLederberg plates I think they ere called - that is bacteria evolving antiobiotic resistance in an antiobiotic atmosphere)
so the question then is does it account for everything we say it does
or do we go for more exotic and less likely explanations
shows they werent typing at random doesnt it ?
Problem is boys you can see evolution under the microscope
(LLederberg plates I think they ere called - that is bacteria evolving antiobiotic resistance in an antiobiotic atmosphere)
so the question then is does it account for everything we say it does
or do we go for more exotic and less likely explanations
Yes I suppose I do take that view that the Universe is a product of chance. This would be the case even if the odds against it were so incomprehensibly vast, as they must be given the length of times that the Universe has been going on. But why is this a problem? If the Universe doesn't care about the outcome then to my mind this "odds massively against it" no longer matters. Basically the reason being that well, something had to happen, and the state of the Universe currently is just that something. There is nothing intrinsically special about us, or our present, or about anything else.
I think leaping that hurdle is the most important. "How can we have got here given how incomprehensibly unlikely it was?" "Yes, but what about all the other possibilities there may have been?" Those alternatives, if they do exist, are also as unlikely, and we're just in the one that happened.
Another thing of course is as I have said earlier, it's not even clear that things are as unlikely as they seem. Some future theory yet to be discovered may demonstrate that the chances of things being this way are far higher than most people think at the moment. Or such a theory may never be found, but either way we don't know enough one way or the other - in which case we revert to my "but does the Universe really care what happens?" argument.
I think leaping that hurdle is the most important. "How can we have got here given how incomprehensibly unlikely it was?" "Yes, but what about all the other possibilities there may have been?" Those alternatives, if they do exist, are also as unlikely, and we're just in the one that happened.
Another thing of course is as I have said earlier, it's not even clear that things are as unlikely as they seem. Some future theory yet to be discovered may demonstrate that the chances of things being this way are far higher than most people think at the moment. Or such a theory may never be found, but either way we don't know enough one way or the other - in which case we revert to my "but does the Universe really care what happens?" argument.
Khandro - your silly remarks about Dawkins have received the brief answers they deserve.
jim360 - you underestimate the power of infinity. If something has a probability of 0.001 then in a thousand tries the odds are evens that it will happen. In 10,000 tries the odds are 10-1 on its happening. And so on. In other words the final probability is a product of the initial probability and the number of tries.
No matter how small the initial probability, when it is multiplied by infinity it becomes infinite itself. And an infinite probability of something's happening amounts to a certainty that it will happen.
You cannot apply everyday experiences to discussions about infinity.
jim360 - you underestimate the power of infinity. If something has a probability of 0.001 then in a thousand tries the odds are evens that it will happen. In 10,000 tries the odds are 10-1 on its happening. And so on. In other words the final probability is a product of the initial probability and the number of tries.
No matter how small the initial probability, when it is multiplied by infinity it becomes infinite itself. And an infinite probability of something's happening amounts to a certainty that it will happen.
You cannot apply everyday experiences to discussions about infinity.
I'm sorry, what?! That's a complete nonsense chakka. It depends on how the probability is distributed. For a binomial distribution with probability 0.001 and 1000 trials the probability that that event will occur at least once is 0.63 not 0.5. So I get the feeling that you don't get probability as well as you think.
Furthermore as I said earlier for an infinite string of text there is no reason why that text should not be AAAAA... meaning that no other string of any length will ever appear, even if the probability if its occurring is "1".
Furthermore as I said earlier for an infinite string of text there is no reason why that text should not be AAAAA... meaning that no other string of any length will ever appear, even if the probability if its occurring is "1".
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